The front pages in Spain this morning offer, as ever, an insight into each newspaper's editorial priorities as well as the previous evening's events. The Madrid-based AS and Marca lead on Spain's defeat of Colombia, while the Barcelona-based Mundo Deportivo are more interested in Lionel Messi and Argentina's victory over Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal. Sport, also based in Barcelona, shunted both stories aside in favour of a panicked front-page headline relaying the news that Real Madrid were trying to sign Cesc Fábregas.

"Madrid want to steal Cesc," they yelped, but they too made sure to bill Argentina's win over Portugal above that of Spain over Colombia. "Messi beats Ronaldo," reads the smaller headline to the side of their Fábregas banner. Mundo Deportivo went with "Messi's Manita [handful]" – a nod to the fact that, having beaten Real Madrid 5-0 with Barcelona earlier in the season, the Argentinian had now won his past five head-to-head meetings with the Portuguese.

Having celebrated this latest triumph for their player, however, Mundo Deportivo were also keen to highlight the fact that he had again not been as dominant with Argentina as he is with Barcelona. "Without Barça Messi would still be the best but not on this scale," wrote Oriol Domènech. "If Barça's enormous superiority over their rivals is thanks to Messi then Messi's enormous superiority over the rest is also thanks to Barça. You need both."

Sport, on the other hand, were more concerned with what they saw as a deliberate attempt on Portugal's part to foul their star man at every opportunity. "José Mourinho got his way," harrumphed Javier Giraldo. "The Real Madrid coach said on Sunday that Messi got kicked less than Ronaldo, inviting rivals to be more forceful with him. Portugal, the first to go up against the Barcelona striker, followed the instructions of their compatriot. We will have to hope this doesn't set an example from now on."

Marca, for their part, called Argentina's win "misleading". They did acknowledge that Messi was that country's best player, however, and AS said he had been the leading protagonist in the early stages.

In Portugal, meanwhile, they declared their own man the winner. "Ronaldo comes out on top," announced O Jogo this morning, declaring him the winner of his duel with Lionel Messi despite the fact Portugal had been beaten 2-1 by Argentina, with the Barcelona player snatching the last-minute winner. Their argument was that, since Ronaldo, who also scored, had been taken off after 60 minutes, it was unfair to take the remaining part of the game into consideration.

Other countries, too, were paying attention, and Italy's Gazzetta dello Sport declared the contest between the players to have been "a draw" – awarding both men a 7/10 for their performance.

Gazzetta, of course, were more excited by Italy's 1-1 draw away to Germany. "This is not the time to come down into the piazza to celebrate, but a 1-1 draw in a friendly against the third-best country at the World Cup is more beautiful than it seems because it carried a whiff of the future," writes Luigi Garlando under the headline "We want you like this!!!"

There was excitement about the international debut of Thiago Motta and the growing stature of the young centre-back Andrea Ranocchia but the man of the match award went to Giuseppe Rossi, scorer of his team's late equaliser. "An 'American' who frees us from the Germans (in a sense a story we've seen before)," writes Sebastiano Vernazza, making the curious choice to reference to the second world war.

The French press were even more animated, understandably, about their own national team's 1-0 win over Brazil. "Better and better," announces the front page of L'Equipe. Inside Vincent Duluc notes that: "There wasn't a lap of honour, the public didn't come down into the streets except to go home and the Champs Elysées will be calm today. But France beat Brazil at Stade de France and such a win still looks bright, even if there wasn't much brightness in the match itself."